After being unable to locate Sergeant Thomas Wilson’s resting place in Linwood Cemetery last week, the New Zealand Remembrance Army, a trust devoted to restoring war graves, has pieced together two lives shattered by the Great War.
“There’s two soldiers in the grave now, not just one,” said Remembrance Army chief executive Simon Strombom.
Wilson and his brother-in-law, Private Robert Moore, enlisted on the same October day in 1917, trained in unison at Trentham and took the same troopship to war, where they served in C company of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade.
The pair separated when Wilson was seriously wounded at Passchendaele on October 12, 1917, where the death toll for New Zealand soldiers is estimated at 957.
He had an arm amputated and returned home before the Armistice in November 1918. Moore sailed for Christchurch the following year after a lengthy convalescence in the UK to treat shell shock, the Western Front’s equivalent of post traumatic stress disorder.
Wilson, a Military Medal recipient for gallantry in June 1917, was also blighted by mental health issues before he hung himself in a Moorhouse Ave property on his birthday, on May 9, 1919.
An inquest determined Wilson was of “unsound mind” when he chose to end his torment.
Robert Moore was interred after he died on October 1, 1960, aged 74. His name is also not recorded on a headstone.
Strombom believes Moore, who was discharged from the army the day his brother-in-law died, decided Wilson should be buried in the family plot.
“He’s done that because of the bond forged in combat and said ‘put me on top’,” he said.
“It’s a real bond of brotherhood, they would have been through the Somme and Passchendaele together.”
Plans are now underway to right Sarah Moore’s earthquake-toppled headstone and place a granite memorial for Wilson and Moore to mark their service and sacrifice.
Ideally, it will be in place in time for this year’s Anzac Day commemoration.
Moore is included in the cemetery’s roll of honour; Wilson is not and the National Army Museum Te Mata Toa has no record of him being included in a memorial.
“That is not to say he isn’t on one, although given the circumstances of his death and that period of time, it was not spoken of and often there was shame or stigma attached,” said museum research services leader Lucy Alabaster.
